James Bevel

James Bevel (19 October 1936-19 December 2008) was Director of Direct Action of the SCLC and a leader of the African-American Civil Rights movement.

Biography
James Bevel was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi in 1936, one of seventeen children. Bevel worked on a cotton plantation and in a steel mill, served in the US Navy, and intended to become a singer, only to become a Baptist teacher after garduaying from a Nashville seminary in 1961. In 1960, Bevel took part in the Nashville Student Movement, and he later joined SNCC and the SCLC. In 1962, Bevel agreed to work with Martin Luther King, Jr. on an equal basis, and he became the SCLC Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education while MLK served as chairman and spokesperson of the SCLC, and Bevel organized the SCLC's activities. Bevel fought for voting rights in the Selma to Montgomery marches, and he later became involved in the Chicago housing and anti-Vietnam War movements. Bevel would fall out with the SCLC after Ralph Abernathy succeeded MLK as chairman in 1968, opposing the Poor People's Campaign and running as the Republican Party's candidate for the 7th congressional district of Illinois in 1984. Bevel moved to the right during the 1980s and supported Ronald Reagan as president, and he would assist the Nation of Islam in organizing its 1995 march on Washington DC. In May 2007, he was arrested for incest, and he was released awaiting appeal after seven months and a fine of $50,000, facing fifteen years in prison. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2008.